Among the many other temporary casualties of Hurricane Sandy’s wrath (such as Gawker, The Huffington Post, and Gizmodo) is the activist site AVAAZ.org, which promotes activism on issues such as climate change, human rights, animal rights, corruption, poverty, and conflict.

“Due to flooding from Hurricane Sandy, the Avaaz website is currently experiencing temporary outages,” the site reports. “We are working round the clock to get it fully functional as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience and please try back later — we have some important campaigns to win together!”

Unfortunately, AVAAZ is also hosting Leonardo DiCaprio’s rapidly growing petition for the creation of a Southern Ocean marine sanctuary to protect thousands of polar species. A high-level Antarctic conservation meeting kicked off in Australia on Tuesday with plans to approve such protections. According to sources, Australia, France, and the EU all support the measure, with Russia and South Korea leading the charge against.

“[These countries]…are threatening to vote it down so they can plunder these seas now that others have been fished to death,” DiCaprio wrote to supporters of the petition. “The whales and penguins can’t speak for themselves, so it’s up to us to defend them. Let’s change negotiators’ minds with a massive wave of public pressure.”

If approved, the legislation would create a sanctuary twice the size of India.

Just before AVAAZ lost power, DiCaprio announced via Twitter that the petition had already garnered over 1 million signatures – an awesome milestone. Let’s hope AAVZ gets everything safely up and running soon so that more voices are heard in time for the conservation meeting.

About Michael dEstries

Michael has been blogging since 2005 on issues such as sustainability, renewable energy, philanthropy, and healthy living. He regularly contributes to a slew of publications, as well as consulting with companies looking to make an impact using the web and social media. He lives in Ithaca, NY with his family on an apple farm.